Firebomber Publications Blog

Wildfire News Of The Day (the Firebomber Publications blog) provides comprehensive international wildfire news. Subscribers include over 10,000 personnel from fire agencies, contractors, and government entities on five continents. "BEST NEWSLETTER I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY 32 YEARS IN THE FIRE SERVICE" - San Diego Fire Department Chief Brian Fennessy.

Monday, June 04, 2012

WILDFIRE NEWS OF THE DAY - 060412

A 10-acre wildfire burning in San Mateo County, California, prompted freeway offramp closures on Saturday (1); while resources battling a 1,600-acre wildfire in Sequoia National Forest were bolstered, bringing containment to 35% (2). An ABC news video discusses wildfires burning in the Southwest (3); Sierra Front Wildfire Cooperators estimating that a 1,070-acre wildfire burning near Gardnerville, Nevada, was now 55% contained (4). Several wildfires continued to blaze across New Mexico (5); where scientists are worried about re-growth in areas scorched by the 156,000-acre Las Conchas Fire last year (6); even as firefighters brought containment of the massive 377 mi.² Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire to 17%, allowing the ghost town of Mogollon, which had been evacuated, to reopen this Wednesday (7); but a wildfire near Bear Springs grew to 100 acres in size (8). Fire crews continued to make progress on a pair of wildfires burning in Colorado (9); where a wildfire in the Boulder Ranger District was contained to less than an acre (10); and the governor is set to sign wildfire compensation bills today for the Lower North Fork Fire that killed 3 people and caused $11M in property damage in March (11); an op-Ed piece discussing what the state's responsibility should be in regards to that blaze (12). State and federal officials are becoming concerned about firearm activity in Utah after target shooting sparked a 1,680-acre wildfire (13). It's a sad day for Montana-based Neptune Aviation, which had one P-2V aircraft crash fighting a fire in Utah (14); and another totaled while landing in Douglas County, Nevada (15); even as the National Transportation Safety Board prepared to begin investigations (16); Wildfire NOTD subscriber Mike Meadows, a professional air-tanker photographer, sending along the photo of Tanker 11 in action seen above. A lack of funding has prompted US Forest Service to stop posting an overnight fire crew on Wyoming's Bighorn National Forest (17). There was trouble in paradise as a pair of wildfires was reported outside of Honolulu, Hawaii (18); one of the fires being stopped just 15 yards short of a home (19). Firefighters in Ontario, Canada, continued to make good progress on wildfires dampened by rainfall, including the massive 39,518-hectare blaze burning outside of Timmins (20). A costly wildfire has scorched 30,000 ha in India's Uttarakhand state, destroying thousands of dollars of timber in the process (21); and a corrupt forest department is looking the other way as wildfires destroy stands of timber in Himachal Pradesh state as well (22). Australian environmentalists threatened to "tree sit" to block logging in one of the few areas not ravaged by the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria's Toolangi State Forest (23). And finally, although we typically think of firefighters arriving at an incident in a fire truck, firefighters in Scotland reached theirs by ferry boat!